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Ball Lightning
Animaton and Documentary
Description/storyline of your film: Ball Lightning is the true story of a refugee who fled the personal and social effects of Soviet-run East Germany after the end of WWII and immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. The story is told through the eyes of the surrogate daughter she raised after being forced to give away her own infant daughter as the Iron Curtain rose. The film is an intergenerational love story dedicated to her lost daughter, Esther, a reminder that children separated from their families because of war are never forgotten by those who love them.
Director: Trina Baker
Producer: Trina Baker
Writer: Trina Baker
Cast/Animators: Robert Gifford-Sound Design,Aimee Ham-Lead Animator, Hanah Cincotta-Animator, Serena Bartlett – Pre-Production Manager/Animator, Willlow Machado: Animator, VFX,Allyson Wyman: Animator,Isaac Donnelly: Animator, Ali Houraibi: Animator,Hannah Mellon: Animator,Kelley Smith: Script Editor,Becky Bettencourt: Storyboard Editor,Sarah Clifford: Storyboard Artist,Joseph Corcoran: Background , Sabrina Crockton: Background Art Art,Peyton Thomspon: Background Art, Madison Gassel: End Credit Animation,Miles Crusberg Rosen: End Credit Animation
Editor: Trina Baker
Any awards, accolades or additional details about the process you would like to mention: Best Animation Audience Award at the NewportBeach Film Festival, and the Norwalk Film Festival, Best Animation: New Jersey Film Festival,The New York Short Animation Film Festival, New Bedford Film Festival, Clare Island Film Festival, Ireland, Best Director: Berlin Indie Shorts Film Festival, Best Documentary Short, Great Wonders Uplift Film Festival
Process:Ball Lightning is a frame-by-frame documentary animation, with a kinetic, tactile approach towards the materials to highlight place and time, meant to evoke the process of combining fragmented memories into a singular, cohesive narrative.The film, with its 110 watercolor backgrounds and 52 oil paintings, highlights the use of the artist's hand. The film’s mediums mirror its dual role as memoir and biography. The memoir sequences adopt a child’s perspective, using hand‑drawn pose‑to‑pose animation on watercolor to evoke a sketchbook-like record of fleeting childhood memory. This light, gestural style contrasts sharply with the stop motion heavier oil‑on‑panel imagery representing Gusta’s former life in Germany. Shot against a wall, the straight‑ahead oil animation lets gravity pull the paint, emphasizing its tactile unpredictability and the chaos shaping Gusta’s story.
Colors of the Soul
Short
West Coast Premiere
A girl lives with her cat in a monotone world that rains colors - but no one is allowed to touch them. One day, her cat escapes and the girl accidentally interacts with the colorful rain, It is beautiful and enthralling and the girl abandons the rules to dance. As the rain stops, a patrol arrives. They whitewash and capture her. The girl is again surrounded by black and white. That is, until she realizes the color is inside her.
Director: Lauren Schwartzbard
Producer: Lauren Schwartzbard
Writer: Lauren Schwartzbard
Animation Studio: Lightning Animation
Indiegogo Creative Spotlight Fall 2024, Urbanite Arts & Film Festival 2025 Official Selection - SCREENPLAY SHORT
Website: https://www.laurenschwartzbard.com/colors-of-the-soul
Instagram: (personal) https://www.instagram.com/lauren.schwartzbard
Facebook: (personal) https://www.facebook.com/lauren.schwartzbard
Death Of Fles
Music Video / Animation
West Coast Premiere
Death Of Fles is an animated music video set inside a surreal courtroom trial, where a mutilated, headless body becomes the centre of testimony, accusation and psychological collapse. As three witnesses give fragmented accounts, the trial gradually dissolves into nightmare, revealing a world suspended between guilt, ritual, memory and hallucination.
Director & Writer: Zechen Huang
Producer: Zechen Huang
Cinematographer: Zechen Huang
Animator: Zechen Huang
Editor: Zechen Huang
Death Of Fles was produced independently by Zechen Huang, who developed the film across concept, direction, animation, editing, worldbuilding and final delivery. The project combines cinematic staging, real-time animation, surreal architectural space and music video language to create an unstable psychological trial world.
Website:
https://www.zechenhuang.com
Instagram:
@zechen_huang321
LOOK OUT!
Animation
A once-peaceful community is thrown into panic when a cartoon criminal escapes from a neighborhood watch sign. Word travels fast and the entire local message board knows the truth: he will do a crime. Maybe even two. LOOK OUT! Only through the power of local paranoia and super-funding the police force can any sense of white upper middle class normalcy be restored. But can this mad criminal be stopped before he spray paints the property value off every single-family home? LOOK OUT! An animated satire about public safety based on a neighborhood near you.
Director: Brian Carroll
Producer: Brian Carroll
Writer: Brian Carroll
Cast: Brian Carroll, L. Stephanie Tait, Dawn Sam Alden, Marios Amontaristos, Jacob Athyal, Robert Contri, Jono Eiland, Theo Embeck, Kate Faye, Renée Torchio MacDonald, Steve Ogden, Ari Radousky, Kimberly Rockwell, Hadiyyah Noelle Smith
Cinematographer: Brian Carroll
Editor: Brian Carroll
2026 Official Selections at Columbus International Film + Animation Festival, Rochester International Film Festival, and Dances With Films LA
Website: http://mediafolly.com/lookout/
Instagram: @classicbri and @mediafolly
Naughty Simon
Web series
Grumpy old man Barry accuses his neighbor Simon of stealing his lemons.
Director: Mike Brislee
Producer: Mike Brislee
Cast: Mike Brislee
Editor: Mike Brislee
Nominated for best web series at The Gold Coast Film Festival, Golden Nugget International Film Festival UK, Web Festival NZ.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/naughtysimonofficial/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/p/Naughty-Simon-61584748862065/
Gilded Gutter
Music Video
World Premiere
This music video clip doesn’t only involve an original rock song created by some of Australia’s finest legends of Aus Rock along with original Art Works but the famous (Anti)War Artist George Gittoes but its imagery empowers women to fight back against the ‘Rich and Powerful’ who see them as commodities to be consumed, be silent and passively die, by those with the money to pay and attempt to hide their evil crimes.
Director: Hellen Rose
Producer: Hellen Rose
Writer: Hellen Rose
Cast: (Hellen Rose)
Cinematographer: George Gittoes, Yaani Cvetanovic
Editor: Hellen Rose with Yaani Cvetanovic
Since its release on May 25th, 2026, we have won:
‘Best Experimental Art House’ -Absurd Film Festival Milan, Italy, and
Selected for IndieX, LA.
Additional details:
I had for so long wanted to see someone give the traitorous maxwell what she deserves - I just said to Yaani, try seeing if 'Claude' will allow the young Virginia in the classic image of her and creepy Andrew, with the creepier maxwell behind her, to turn around and punch andrew and maxwell square in the face…bang! Claude came up with the image you now see as the opener of the clip, so gratifying! I had also felt that the black squares over the girl in the spa with Bill Clinton was not about protecting the identity of the girl involved but more about erasing her from the image so I asked Claude to give her a body and to have her slap 'pervy' Clinton in the face as she got out of the spa, each sequence Claude came up with was lame, a tiny slap with Clinton giggling with a dirty grin at the ‘weakness of a girl’, so we concluded that Claude is a sexist yob who will only accept a woman punching another ‘woman’ but never a man. He would only allow the fictitious girls involved to push the men… well AI is a massive composite of our society, what else should we expect!?! My partner, the Artist and Director George Gittoes had just created a large oil painting titled ‘Rich and Powerful’ so it was a no-brainer to animate those monsters to life and have them ‘consuming’ all in their path…
Song written, performed and directed by Hellen Rose.
The ethical use of AI wrangled by Yanni Cvetanovic.
Vocals- Hellen Rose
Guitars - Clair Burchall and Kim Salmon
Drums - Clare Moore
Bass Jeff Hooker
Website: www.hellenrose.com, www.gittoes.com
Instagram: hellen_rose
TikTok: gittoesfilms
Facebook:HellenRose
The Farmer’s Daughter
Animation (Animated Short)
West Coast Premiere
An eco-conscious stop-motion animated short film about a daughter who strives to save her father’s failing conventional farm using regenerative farming practices.
Director: Melissa Bloom
Producer: Melissa Bloom
Writer: Melissa Bloom
Cinematographer: Kier Atherton
Editor: Melissa Bloom
The Farmer’s Daughter is the first short film from eco-conscious stop-motion animation studio, The Sisters Bloom, whose mission is to create in alignment with Nature. The film is made entirely from non-toxic, eco-friendly, and natural materials and methods. Even the score was tuned to 432Hz, the sound at which we hear Nature, rather than the industry standard 440Hz.
The film has won Best Stop-Motion at the New York Short Animation Festival (Winter 2026) and Best Animation at the Sustain Film Festival 2026. It is an Official Selection at the Westland Impact Festival 2026, with more Official Selection festival announcements coming this Summer.
Website: https://thesistersbloom.com/
The Gift
Animation, Shorts
World Premiere
My piece is a 2d animated short, written and created by me, animated with the assistance of a group of fellow artists and friends. This is a sweet story, a type of story that is often overlooked for more provocative themes. It’s about a woman in her twilight years whose life has settled into a couch-TV existence, where she is suddenly confronted by a magical journey that calls to her.
It is an entirely independent, inspirational project, on a small scale but made with a lot of dedication.
Director: Su Jen Buchheim
Producer: Su Jen Buchheim
Writer: Su Jen Buchheim
Editor: Su Jen Buchheim
Cast: Nathalie Buce
My gratitude to Tammy Manis, Yvette Molina, Peter Paul Bautista and for assisting with the animation, and to Karl Gnass for consultation.
Yokaitopia
Animated Short
Los Angeles Premiere
Yokaitopia is the story of a boy who crosses over into the supernatural world of Japanese Yokai, mysterious spirits that inhabit people, objects, and places.
Director: Glenna Burmer
Producer: Glenna Burmer
Writer: Glenna Burmer
Cinematographer: Animation by Deep Sky Studios and Imaginary Planet
Awards for Best Animation: Mannheim Arts and Film Festival, Paris Film Awards, New York Movie Awards, Beyond the Screen Festival
Award for Best Director Animation Film: Tokyo Film & Screenplay Awards
You Are Not Alone
Animation / Music Video
Festival Premiere
What if the strongest connections are the ones we cannot see?
You Are Not Alone is an animated music film based on an original song written and performed by Ellen Ray.
Set in a cinematic winter world, the film explores love, hope, memory, and the emotional bonds that remain strong despite distance and time. Through original music and animation, the story follows a journey of separation, longing, and reunion.
Combining music and visual storytelling, the film conveys the universal experience of missing someone who remains deeply important in our lives. Through its atmosphere, imagery, and song, You Are Not Alone celebrates the power of connection, resilience, and hope.
Created from an original musical work and brought to life through animation, the film is a personal and emotional story about the people who stay in our hearts no matter where life takes us.
Director: Ellen Ray
Producer: Ellen Ray
Writer: Ellen Ray
Original Music & Lyrics: Ellen Ray
Animation by: Pavel Terentyev
Original music, lyrics, and vocals performed by Ellen Ray.
The project combines original music and animation to create a cinematic story about love, hope, and emotional connection.
Instagram: @ellenrayofficial